


How To Handle Guilt

by CharbroilLaFlamme



Series: Bioshock: Measurement of A Father [13]
Category: BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games)
Genre: BioShock References, BioShock Spoilers, Confessional, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Internal Monologue, Mild Language, Rapture (BioShock), Stanley’s drunk again, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 17:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15733701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharbroilLaFlamme/pseuds/CharbroilLaFlamme
Summary: Stanley’s proper drunk and feeling introspective.





	How To Handle Guilt

Stanley was not sober.

In fact, his nights off were generally never a thing to write about—at least not in something meant to be read by respectable folk.

Getting his hands on a few-weeks-old newspaper, he caught himself reading. Line after line blurring. He moved his sweaty bangs from his forehead, for the fifth time in that span of three minutes.

One article jumped out at him. The emboldened name “Casales” had dashed across his vision. Catching him.

Stanley sighed, _can’t seem ta get away from the bad news, eh?_

He turned his attention to the photos in the paper, underneath which was a paragraph—talking in detail about the incident.

_The family’s youngest member, Marina Casales, disappeared shortly before the parents’ deaths._

_Right, she... disappeared._ Well, he was paraphrasing. He knew what _really_ happened. _Keep telling yourself that._

Kids had a habit of vanishing in Rapture. Especially the girls.

But it wasn’t every day Stanley could realise that he had contributed to the ever-growing list of missing children.

He was happy to not have to worry about his little girl getting taken away—because he didn’t have one.

At least he didn’t _think_ he did.

_What kinda dad would I be?_

He breathed something of an uncomfortable laugh at the question posed. _I mean, I’m not gonna lie... but that poor kid wouldn’t survive long in my care._

At one point, he might have been interested in being a family man. But something about it seemed so thankless, now—fathering something that cries, crawls, tries to touch his stuff all the time. He didn’t necessarily favour the idea.

 _Children_ , he blanched.  _If you want to keep your kid, better damn well keep them within arms’ length... ‘cause Rapture has a mighty appetite for the uninitiated._

He sighed, _but if it were my kid... I’d have searched high and low. Hell or high water. Nothing would get between me or my—_

Suddenly he understood, and it _hurt_. He came to grips with that dark pit in some unused part of his mind.

A place where he cast annoying feelings like this—and he did it so much, but he didn’t realise that this would double back and bite him on the ass.

That sudden, uncomfortable emotional surge caused him to fold the paper over tensely, to avoid seeing the news story.

He proceeded to intertwine his fingers, beginning to brood, ruminate and rein his thoughts back into reality.

He closed his eyes, his throat seemed to contract violently with the haphazard breaths he tried to take—said breathing turned all hitched as he began to lose his grip on the proverbial leash.

His twined fingers separated and tightened into fists.

He had half a mind to slam his head into a wall. Just so he could knock himself out of this fit he was having. Maybe sleep for a while. Or forever.

A concussion would be more favourable to what he was feeling then.

He tangled his fingers in his wiry black hair and sat forward, looking down at the paper forlornly.

Tears had been streaming down his face, he realised—once the paper had become spotted and damp. It seemed funny that something like that could go so easily unnoticed.

Nonetheless, he forced his bangs back as he pressed the palms of his hands against his eyelids and leaned back as if that’d stop it.

He kept saying—like a mantra—that he didn’t have anything personal against the girls, it wasn’t like he enjoyed it. Wasn’t like he’d go out and do it again for the hell of it.

Of course, maybe he had gone a little bit overboard, just to cover evidence.

Because of fucking paranoia, he made two little girls basically... cease to exist. _Well, close enough_ , he supposed.

Stanley had considered _other_ methods of dealing with the nosy little brats, some of them he felt were worse than just giving them up. And posed a significant risk.

Thought about how easy it was just to put them down and be done with it. At least once, his hand had gone around the second girl’s throat—non-lethally, but his fingers shook, and had threatened to constrict.

Part of him had no problem with it—but the rest of him realised that may have been going _way_ too far.

And he let her neck go. Then he went to drop her off at the orphanage.

He didn’t know what happened after, he only knew that he was contented, convinced himself that he had gotten the upper hand. Then there was the matter of the family...

He looked at the paper again, forcing himself to swallow down his thoughts. Thoughts that attacked him, he sat trying to stave them off.

But they continued on. Hard to tell whose side his feelings were on:

_Wow, you’re a real piece of work, ain’tcha, Stan? You could’ve done literally anything else, instead of fucking everyone over like that._

_You... got people killed. You hurt kids. Christ, you’re disgusting. How do you... forget something like that?_

For a brief moment, he realised that perhaps he deserved the broken nose Sinclair had given him.

Something clicked. He had to talk about it. Had to release it somehow before all the bottling up took a turn for the worse. But how?

_Ah, confessionals. If you can’t just forget it..._

Nobody judged you in confessionals. Nobody batted an eyelash you if you cried either—meant you were penitent.

Stanley had never considered himself religious in the slightest, so he had never been in one, but the idea of those little booths always somehow made him feel better.

The space to himself. All the time in the world with which he could talk about his—much less incriminating—issues.

But where in the underwater _fuck_ could he find a confessional in Rapture?

There was... something he could do. There were people that could listen. Maybe if Sinclair were still around, _maybe_ him—but even if—Sinclair wouldn’t forgive him. And forgiveness wasn’t even what he was looking for... _absolvement_?

Maybe he could see one of the fellows in Lamb’s flock. Simon Wales? Or was it Daniel? Whichever. One of them would preach, the other would punch him in the face and tell him to get over it.

To be fair, both would probably work in their own special way. And one of them would probably hurt more than the other.

Stanley decided to leave the thought on the backburner for a while—just until he could stop goddamn _crying_.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes!:
> 
> — Stanley thinks that maybe it’s more hassle than it’s worth to keep himself to himself. But he is aware that some things should stay under wraps.
> 
> — Stanley does not consider himself a family type—in fact he’s pretty sensitive about it, he knows he wouldn’t be able to handle such a broad responsibility.
> 
> — There was a point where Stanley did contemplate killing the girls instead of selling them.


End file.
